Harold Ramis’s oeuvre comprised a Hall of Justice for the nerds; people old enough to know there are no super heroes, but young enough to realize we could use them from time to time.

Consider this: a world without Animal House. Or Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.

I can’t fathom how much less happy my childhood would have been without any one of them. A life without all of them? Unimaginable.

And I know I’m not alone. This is Harold Ramis’s legacy: he brought humor and happiness—the real, enduring kind—to millions of people. In a world (then, now) that is full of quick hits, tweets, 15 seconds of fame, weekend blockbusters, and increasingly formulaic, artistically DOA drivel, and their inevitable, unending sequels, it’s worth noting, and celebrating, funny films that endure.

(Fans say Snuff is) a film better left discussed and whispered about than actually seen...and who would disagree.

It started out life as Slaughter (or The Slaughter, depending on who you believe), a low budget exploitation attempt to bring some contemporary content to the fading motion picture genre. Two of the legitimate legends of the cinematic category - Roberta and Michael Findlay of The Touch of Her Flesh, The Curse of Her Flesh, and The Kiss of her Flesh fame - took $30,000 and a flight down to Argentina to craft a crappy knock-off of the still making headlines Manson Family. Featuring an enigmatic leader named Satan (with an accent over the second “a” to avoid the obvious name reference) and a drugged out glamor girls, the infamous filmmakers came up with 80 minutes of mind-numbing boredom. Even their simulated softcore sex scenes failed to ‘arouse’ much interest.

The Chicago cop-turned-actor was one of the modern greats: a heavy and a tough guy who didn't mind being the butt of the joke.

No movie was ever made worse by the late Dennis Farina, and many were drastically improved. One of the more memorable character-actor foot soldiers who stolidly slog through the trenches of TV and Hollywood, he brought chiseled grit, a dandyish gleam (that high grey hair, the wiseguy suits), and a puckish sense of trickery to each of his performances. Dialogue that would sound like second-hand mobster mush out of somebody else’s mouth was given a vinegary snap in his. For a certain kind of appreciator, his appearance was always a cheer-worthy event, much like what happens when a particular breed of fanboy spots Ron Perlman on screen. When Farina showed up, it was pretty much always as a cop, ex-cop, hustler, or heavy; there were not many romantic interludes in his resume.

The appeal of Le Doulos among a line of top-tier Criterion restorations comes both in the film’s labyrinthine, double-cross laden script and some of the best noir cinemaphotography ever captured on film.

The archetype of cool in French director Jean-Pierre Melville’s cinema, for most, is the fedora-and-trenchcoat wearing killer Jef Costello in the 1967 policier Le Samourai. While Alain Delon’s performance was a trend-setter for the gangster film, I would argue Melville’s finest achievement came five years earlier, in 1962. Le Doulos (meaning “the hat” or “the one who wears the hat”, signifying a police informant) is perhaps Melville’s strongest noir, despite the fact he would make many more later into his career; Le Deuxieme Souffle and Le Cercle Rouge in particular stand out.

As if performing careful, clinical cuts with a scalpel, visual artist Jeff Desom deconstructed the iconic backdrop of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window for a short film essay that has been shortlisted for the 2012 Vimeo Awards.

As if performing careful, clinical cuts with a scalpel, visual artist Jeff Desom deconstructed the iconic backdrop of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window for a short film essay that has been shortlisted for the 2012 Vimeo Awards. Desom used only the original footage from the 1954 work; the beloved back courtyard of Rear Window‘s Greenwich Village apartments is here in all of its glory, planted just beneath the bedroom of the film’s hobbled protagonist, L.B. Jeffries, played by James Stewart.